How Deep Is Your Zen?

There’s a video going around. A conductor — leading an orchestra in a classical piece — stops all the players except strings and woodwinds. Then down to just strings and oboe. Finally, the oboe, and we hear the oboeist has been playing the BeeGees’ “How Deep Is Your Love”.

Zen teachers aren’t there to play the oboe at us, and when they do we can’t recognize it. They show us how to shush the orchestra of our worries and distractions and ruminations, until we learn to hear the oboe. We can only find in ourselves what’s already there.

The hall is sometimes loud, other times silent. It was built and it will be unbuilt.

When we look up and realize we are the oboe, then our ears open to the players and the music. The pages stop turning.

Now everything is jazz.

(C)2024 Athens Zen Group

Image: Creative Commons via Pixabay

---